If we’re to make a feature request thread here. I’d like to see it user side rather then room owner side. I won’t lie if I said it wasn’t irritating sometimes. Perhaps being able to toggle it back on so you can garner critical information when you need it.
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To some effect I think the annoyance is kinda the point. When you’re announced in a room you’re expected to interact with it in some capacity. And if the foot traffic bothers you it may lead you to leave the park and seek out more remote locations in Sinder. Which I see as a good thing.
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To this I’d say “Gee, I hope not!” That implies that newcomers have stopped arriving, which I don’t think is a goal of Wolfery (or any other open, social space).
I appreciate the pointer to the older thread! I like the idea of “collapsing” these messages, which I’ve seen in other spaces (including non-RP chat environments), which can get as simple as one line, if several exits/entrances happen in between two spoken utterances, suggested yonder: “Alice and Bob joined. Carol popped in. Dave left.”
But really, I’d be happy with most any mitigation of this issue and I’m glad folks are thinking about it.
I am actually considering the “muting” of events not to hide them completely, but instead display them as clickable placeholders that stack, like this:
This sort of style would not just be for muting of travel messages, but would work the same for the Ignore characters feature I should create.
It would work like this:
- Any muted message would get a visible placeholder mark
- Multiple consecutive muted messages would stack, with newer messages added further to the right.
- Different types of messages would get different style placeholder, eg:
- Darker grey for travel messages
- Lighter grey for room communication
- Non-filled lighter grey for private messages
- Hovering a placeholder would show the whole message in a Tool-tip like box above it
- Clicking a placeholder would show the message just like on hover, but closes on next click (for mobile devices that cannot hover)
It would not be a “total mute”, but I think it would very much address the issue without throwing away any information.
Any thoughts on that?
If you’re worried about throwing away information, I think being able to toggle on and off your filters quickly is better. Just hide it completely, bring it back when you’re ready to focus on it.
I’m not entirely certain what you’re proposing to (semi-)mute, here.
I understand the inclusion of low-priority travel messages, which is what I had in mind when I started this thread. (And also “travel messages” is a good summary-term for them, thanks!)
You’re also suggesting that messages from characters you’ve manually put on mute would go into that stack as well, with differently colored indicators?
Yeah, semi-muting characters is not a good idea. ^^" If you’ve gone on my gag list I’d rather not even know of your attempts at communication. I imagine this plip bar getting filled by someone getting ignored pms. Maybe that is a discussion for another topic. I did not like the ideas of multiple different types of messages getting bunched up there. (Especially on something I have to delicately click or hover over on to read.)
I agree:
Rhodochrosite arrives from the east along Sinder Lane.
Jack leaves and heads east along Sinder Lane.
Malachite leaves together with Jack
Bonnie leaves together with Jack
Alexander appears in a flash of light.
Bigg arrives from the east along Sinder Lane.
Bigg leaves and heads west along Sinder Lane.
Algier leaves and heads east along Sinder Lane.
Captain leaves and heads west along Sinder Lane.
Sendar leaves together with Captain
Algier arrives from the east along Sinder Lane.
Algier leaves and heads west along Sinder Lane.
Rhodochrosite ooc says, “lots of antsy furs, as usual. :p”
Bigg arrives from the west along Sinder Lane.
Bigg leaves and heads east along Sinder Lane.
Draco arrives from the west along Sinder Lane.
Draco leaves and heads east along Sinder Lane.
Captain arrives from the east along Sinder Lane.
Sendar arrives together with Captain
Urthmyst arrives from the west along Sinder Lane.
Sendar falls asleep.
Captain falls asleep.
Urthmyst leaves the park and goes through the doors to Sinder Hostel.
Sapphire arrives from the west along Sinder Lane.
That is annoying to look at right?
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I do like this stacking idea for travel messages. Using this for gags should be optional on some level, I think. Some people will want the information recoverable on those rare occasions when the individual says something interesting, and some people would just prefer to forget that their target exists if they can.
Having the ability to suppress certain types of messages to a hidden log is a great idea, I think! Even possibly an opportunity for a GUI solution! Like a “back” console that they get shifted to while toggled off.
I actually DO like the idea of being able to temporarily hide messages from specific users, but only as an ADDITION to a full block feature which would show no evidence of them at all. I could imagine that if a user needs to block someone, seeing a bunch of suppressed messaged pile up could be anxiety-inducing. Plus, it would prohibit you from using the feature for other intended purposes without being exposed to the undesired content.
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I fully agree with that. I have witnessed such things on a few discord servers, where I saw myself forced to block one or another person. It is anxiety-inducing when let’s say every third message is blocked and your fearful curiosity always opens these messages regardless to see if they are currently making fun of you with the third.
I for myself am sceptical regarding a block feature. Because regardless if you use it, you will see yourself leaving the room sooner than later, either because that person is making you uncomfortable or the feeling of not knowing everything happening forces you to read the blocked messages or leave the scene…
I see a lot of value in not fully omitting messages. I’d like to think users can be trusted to have enough willpower to leave people blocked/muted and not looking at stuff they don’t want to see if that’s what they’re after.
At least if people are aware a thing happened but you've opted to not see it on your own then there won’t be any social prompt for any “AcCiDeNtAl” chatter about who they’ve decided to block since they’ll be able to check why muted nibs are showing up if they’re really that curious without having to discuss it with the public.
As an aside: This is something moderators should absolutely warn people for if it occurs since its pretty disrespectful to (inadvertently or not) make who they’ve blocked a topic of public conversation.
I’ve tried to solve this issue with the new mute travel command in Release v1.37.0.
Does it solve your travel spam issues? Feedback is surely welcome!
It does not yet allow the muting/ignoring of characters, though it will use the same sort of placeholder system once implemented.
This solution has the OP’s blessing. It isn’t how I would have thought to do it, which makes it all the better. Thanks, Acci!
By the way, did I observe correctly that if a character I’m focusing on emits a travel message, then I see that printed as usual (and not squished into a little gray pill)? If so, that’s a great idea, and I agree with it! (And if not, then uh… I still think it’s a great idea!)
Yes, that is a correct observation. 
While I haven’t documented it in the in-game help, I did mention it in the release notes:
I thought, the one you focus on should be an exception.
Maybe as an option to keep in the back of our minds and possibly explore at a later time, instead of making focused users an exception to the mute, have said users’ travel message ‘pills’ (or whatever we’re calling it) be colored the same as the focus color. Like this:
Could be an interesting route.
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This was precisely what I’d envisioned, before I noticed the way that Acci had already handled the case of focused-character travel.
Honestly, I think it’s fine as it is. The mutes prevent visual clutter produced by folks zipping around, but it makes sense from both IC and UX perspectives that I’d see the movement of a character I’m paying attention to as an action described in detail.
I think I have called them “mute placeholders”, or “placeholders for muted messages”.
I think that a focused character shouldn’t get muted. But I also will do colored mute pills… erm… placeholders.
Focus and mute works on different levels.
Focus works retroactively on all messages, while mute does not. When muting is activated, the decision whether to mute a message or not is made when the message arrives to the client. This is stored as additional info together with the event in the browser’s DB.
That allows us to reload the client and still keep the same messages muted.
But it also means we might activate focus later on for a character whose travel messages has previously been muted. In this case, I will do the “colored pill” thing you suggest.
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I’ve enjoyed the feature so far. But it is rather amusing to me how people’s travel messages in a small room get announced with a single plip. Maybe only stack the messages when there’s more then one on a line. A one plip line takes same space.
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Ha! That’s a good point. It is kind of funny when you’re expecting someone in a private (or public-but-sparse) space, and their arrival is just [blat]. I suppose you could always focus on 'em first, to avoid that effect.
I kinda like the idea of something like Halstrick arrives from the east. when I show up right after some dialog, and letting it morph to ◽️◽️ if someone comes in right afterwards, or if I zoom away in the next moment.